I'm Political Economy editor at Forbes, editor of RealClearMarkets.com, plus a senior economic advisor to Toreador Research & Trading. I have book on how the economy works, Popular Economics: What LeBron James, the Rolling Stones and Downton Abbey Can Teach You About Economics that is set for release in April of 2015. I have a weekly column on Mondays at Forbes.com.

Global Warming's True Believers Are Screaming At The Proverbial Scoreboard

In a recent column about HBO’s documentary series Vice, I questioned Vice founder Shane Smith’s contention that a failure to act on the theory that is global warming will prove perilous. Smith asserted that soon enough 80 of the world’s most developed cities will be under water thanks to inaction when it comes to reducing carbon emissions.

My argument was that market signals suggest a lot of warming alarmism is overdone; that if it were really the problem its advocates say it is, cities like Los Angeles, New York and Seattle would presently be experiencing an outflow of human and financial capital, and housing prices in all three would be in serious decline. Importantly, none of what I said was rooted in science. No scientist, I merely pointed out that market signals don’t reflect what warmists deem a scientific conclusion.

My contrarian case not surprisingly won me all manner of e-mails and comments about what a moron I am, how imbecilic and juvenile is my thinking, etc. That’s fair enough. This is a contentious issue, and it’s certainly true that global warming believers are very emotional about a theory they think is true. So while true believers are certainly welcome to their opinions on the matter, it’s hard to not conclude that they’re the sporting equivalent of those who go to football games and yell at the scoreboard for it innocently offering numerical confirmation of their faltering team’s performance.

It’s possible markets are blind to very real science, but at present they’re saying the presumptions about global warming peril are either wrong, or at the very least not remotely insurmountable. Indeed, as CNBC’s Robert Frank noted recently, prices of Miami real estate are soaring. Prices of New York City real estate are up 30 percent over the past year, and then for those who might like a slice of Newport Beach or Malibu real estate, they’d be wise to start saving. Prices aren’t falling; instead billionaires like Larry Ellison are purchasing beachfront property rather aggressively. People can argue that the rich don’t care about their money and that they’re willing to see it literally washed over, but such a presumption flies in the face of why people are wealthy to begin with. They didn’t get that way by acting in careless ways with their money.

The desire for coastal property is undeniably true, it’s what was talked about in the aforementioned column, so for warmists to rail against an op-ed that points out what is happening in locales allegedly imperiled by global warming is for them to scream at the proverbial scoreboard. Whatever the truth or lie when it comes to global warming theory, market signals point to a rising tide of denial among the citizenry. And as evidenced by international interest in coastal U.S. properties, warming “denial” has a very international feel to it. Sorry, but it’s true.

Another response to the market argument in the aforementioned column was that markets are often wrong; the 2008 financial crisis a good example of just how wrong they can be. It’s a fair point, but one that is broadly misunderstood. Markets are always correcting for mistakes and malinvestment, but it must be stressed that the ’08 crisis wasn’t caused by a correction of those mistakes, rather it was the result of an inept Bush administration disallowing a correction of those mistakes through bailouts of errant banks with too much exposure to overextended borrowers.

Banks and investment banks have been going bankrupt for as long as both have existed, and if the Bush administration had allowed market forces to prevail such that banks and homeowners had been allowed to fail, there would never have been a crisis. The collapse of Lehman Brothers on its own could never have caused a financial crack-up, but thanks to Bush administration intervention that created the presumption of a Lehman bailout, a man-made government-created market panic revealed itself.

Still, it’s certainly true that financial institutions overextended themselves given their belief that housing could only go up, so the argument is that markets aren’t as knowledgeable as my column presumed they were and are. Because they aren’t, we need elites from government to oversee finance, and we need scientists often funded by government to explain to us that which markets allegedly don’t understand.

Once again, fair enough, but as Gregory Zuckerman pointed out in his 2009 book The Greatest Trade Ever, “Rather than rein it all in [the housing mania], regulators gave the market encouragement, thrilled that a record 69 percent of Americans owned their own homes, up from 64 percent a decade earlier.” In short, it wasn’t government that blew the whistle on an economy-sapping rush into housing, rather it was housing “deniers” on Wall Street. Importantly, the story of those housing deniers speaks to the massive opportunity that global warming’s true believers have if they’re right. Rather than yelling at those who have the temerity to disagree with them, they should encourage their presumed blindness.

Indeed, hedge fund manager John Paulson didn’t become a billionaire many times over because everyone agreed with him; instead he made his billions on an eventual housing correction precisely because no one believed him that housing was due for a decline. Since the markets thought he was wrong, Paulson was able to buy insurance on mortgage securities very cheaply.

What this tells us first off is that it was market forces animated by people like Paulson that ultimately discredited a false narrative about the bulletproof nature of housing, not politicians, regulators, or economists. Second, it speaks to a chance for global warming’s true believers to grow rich off of their activism.

Since markets plainly don’t take seriously the looming peril of global warming, it will be very cheap for the believers to bet against a marketplace that thinks global warming a comical hoax. The irony here is that just as Wall Street firms made a market for Paulson to bet against housing, so will the profit-focused individuals who populate Wall Street make a market for people like Shane Smith, scientists, and activists to bet against all of us fools who think global warming is much ado about nothing.

To the above, many commenters will no doubt say (as they did in various comments to my offending piece from a few weeks ago) that the coming global warming apocalypse isn’t a now thing, rather it’s a future it’s a future thing. Tomorrow when it comes to global warming’s presumed terrors is seemingly the day that never comes, the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens recently featured a quote from then Senator John Kerry in Rio back in 1992 saying the horrors of global warming would reach us in the ‘90s, but if warming activists are perhaps less certain about the timing of the coming calamity than they would like to admit publicly, Wall Street will surely devise ways for their descendants to grow extraordinarily wealthy off of their activism 50 to 100 years from now.

Wall Street is nothing if not expert at creating all manner of ways for individuals to bet on the direction of markets, so if warmists want to short coastal mortgages and companies that don’t even exist as of this writing, skilled financiers will figure out a way to do this for them. And as evidenced by how very expensive coastal properties are today, not to mention how many businesses are located in coastal cities, Wall Street could write these investments very cheaply for them.

What global warming activists should not do is ask for government to subsidize investments in green energy and other concepts meant to save all of us deniers from our supposed blindness. Evidence supporting the latter claim is the bailouts of the banks themselves. They should never have happened as is, but more important for the purposes of this piece is that those bailouts discredited financial institutions in the eyes of much of the electorate. Voters don’t like it when businesses live off of taxpayers, so if the activism of global warmists really is true, they should run with great speed from the political class so that their alarmism similarly is not discredited in the eyes of voters. Either way, the market consensus is saying rather boldly that global warming believers are wrong, but once again, within that consensus lies a huge opportunity for those same believers to marry science with immense profit.

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You seriously make an argument against the Science by citing the stock market, instead of examining the Science? Doesn’t your conscience bother you a least a little bit, for this slice of pre-enlightenment thinking?

LibertyPlease – Thank you for your comments. As my article stated, the true believers in global warming are screaming at the scoreboard. The earth will soon be under water without their vision, and that’s it. No argument is desired. They’re right and we’re wrong no matter what the markets say. What’s shameful about all this is their desire to fleece us in order to fund their mystics. Where’s the embarrassment?

John… Is there something about the radiative properties of greenhouse gases that you disagree with?

It’s not that “no argument is desired,” it’s that an honest discussion of the issue is desired rather than a blind rejection of clear scientific facts related to climate.

There are definitely issues that are settled and are not up for discussion. Adding ~4.0W/m^2 of radiative forcing for doubling CO2 is not a point of discussion. It’s a fact and you’re not going to not going to get scientists into a discussion of something that’s so well established. It’s tantamount to arguing with creationists over evolution. It’s a completely pointless endeavor.

There is absolutely plenty to discuss when it comes to climate change and how to address the challenges we face. Discussing whether or not it’s a problem is not a discussion. It’s an act of dragging the reluctant into the light of scientific reality.

It is a very unscientific mentality. Good science is interested in potentially disconfirming evidence of a theory. It is also interested not just an effect, but its causes. I too am interested in the data, and I am very slow to say “there is absolutely nothing to this.” Yet, when many of the most astute investors (not traders, but investors), are making significant bets that are contrary to the alleged body of evidence, it is worth inquiring as to why that might be the case. And yet for simply raising that perhaps the fear is overdone, one hears nothing but contempt. Mostly, the effort is too SILENCE anyone who even suggests that it should be questioned, and this alone is reason enough to be at least be skeptical.

As for corporations funding the scientific research, there are a few points worth making:

1) This is a fair question to ask, is research biased? But of course this should be asked of the research supporting climate change. Who is funding it? Lots of government, that’s who. 2) Of course any corporation that will be affected by government policy would want to research the data behind that policy, it would be absurd to expect otherwise. Why shouldn’t they? 3) Government’s sole interest is in expanding its power. As you point out, and as Milton Friedman noted years ago, who are these angels in government who are going to prescribe what you can and cannot do?” Of course they are not angels at all. Government is mostly corrupt, varying in degree, seeking mostly to enlarge itself, and will do so by pointing a gun to your head, i.e. they will use force.

But, what you neglect to understand is, the grant agencies have no influence on the outcome of the research they fund. And the grant recipients get their funding regardless of the conclusions of their research.

What you also neglect to realize is, the core incentive in research is to bring something something important to light that influences our fundamental understanding of the world around us in a significant way. That is the Holy Grail of scientific research. Producing one more paper that shows everyone that what we already know is true is still true… No one builds a name doing that.

The challenge comes when research uncovers things that undermines monied interests. This exact same thing happened starting in the 1920′s in relation to the addition of lead into gasoline. There was conclusive research in the 1920′s that leaded fuels were harmful, and the oil industry launched their own research to show that it was harmless. It took another 50 years to start to address that problem.

Same thing is happening today with National Football League in relation to traumatic head injuries. The research is extremely concerning that injuries are occurring even in high school level players, and the NFL, while they initially were helping to fund the research, pulled the research and started funding their own hand-picked researchers to show conclusions that wouldn’t harm their industry.

Same thing with the tobacco industry. Same thing happened with SO2 emissions and acid rain. Same thing with CFC’s and ozone depletion.

In every one of these cases the industry funded research has been wrong and the grant funded research has been correct. Every single time.

“But, what you neglect to understand is, the grant agencies have no influence on the outcome of the research they fund…”

HaHaHaHaHaHaHooHooHooHehHehHehHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHahaHaHaHehHehHaHaHaHoHoHoHoHoHaHaHahA…. What’s the name of that Turnip Company whose truck you just fell from? I don’t even need to read your second sentense. Gawwwd I needed that Laugh. I haven’t laughed like that since Michael Mann claimed to be a Nobel Prize winner.

Gretchen… Go talk to a researcher. The outcome of the research is not a prerequisite for funding.

You have to remember how much has been accomplished through scientific research over the past couple of centuries. What you’re suggesting is the system is rigged. That it doesn’t work. And that is clearly not the case.

But, to the contrary, industry funded research tends to be for the purpose of protecting the financial interests of the companies funding the research.

I think you should read again. Tamny’s article is larded with comments about Global Warming ‘Alarmists’, and implications that BECAUSE markets are predicting no problem, the Science projecting major issues DECADES from now must be thrown into question; this reasoning is absurd.

Look at Tamny’s reply below. “What’s shameful about all this is their desire to fleece us in order to fund their MYSTICS.”

Tamny’s own words expose his attitude toward Science; furthermore, his attempt to use this bogus technique to undercut the conclusions reached by the IPCC and ALL 200 of the top Scientific Academies of the World, including the NAS and AAS, is shameful. Forbes deserves better from it’s writers.

John said “The earth will soon be under water without their vision, and that’s it. No argument is desired. ”

You appear to have become rather melodramatic, John. Where, in which scientific article, or even in which popular article, did anyone ever claim that “ The earth will soon be under water without their vision, and that’s it” ?

No matter what the markets say? What does that even mean? Also, I love the fact that these scientists and experts, who will continue to do their work regardless of their findings, are somehow believed to be creating a story to further their career. As if they have to create a problem so they have a job. And of course, they are all in on it.

Markets generally don’t care about the truly long term. The discount factor for 100 years at an opportunity cost of 6.5% is .003; why should the market care about that? Play with the numbers to suit.

Most climatologists and the IPCC don’t think Greenland is going to melt completely in the next 100 years. However, continued net melting is almost certain to happen with an unknown tipping point to complete melting. Deal with co2 now in carefully planned increments or let the grand-children of today’s children deal with global catastrophe.

There are aggressive and conservative approaches to mitigating AWG, each representing different trade-offs with respect to who is benefited or harmed, and over what time periods. This is a critical public policy discussion. As long as the right wing is caught up in denialism that discussion won’t happen.

Yes, there’s a lot of name calling from both sides. But my suggestion to anyone is to try to UNDERSTAND the Science, not to attack the Scientists — because if they are trying to delude the public, then they’re ALL in on the conspiracy, since NO credentialed scientist rejects AGW –some claim its effects will be less than the IPCC claims, others say more. But nearly all agree with the IPCC conclusions, and ALL 200 of the Top Scientific Academies publically support the IPCC conclusions.

Utterly untrue. Markets very much price in the long-term. How do you think a common stock is priced at 20 times its current earnings? The more uncertainty there is about the future, the more risk premium that is priced into an asset.

Totally untrue, there are indeed credentialed scientists that question climate change assertions. As a scientist should. Most importantly, there has ALWAYS been climate change for the earth’s three billion years of existence, including periods of human existence prior to industrialization.

Wrong. Even when a stock is priced at 20X earnings, the holders of those shares rarely ever hold those shares for that long. In fact, most shares are traded within a year or so even given 20X earnings.

And yes, the climate has always changed, but it has always changed due to forcings of some kind or another. It’s past climate change that informs science as to what to expect for adding 4 Watts/meter2 to the atmosphere (for 2XCO2e).

And with regards to climate change during human existence, the holocene (the past 10k years) has been extraordinarily stable and has allowed the rise of modern civilization. The holocene temp has slowly varied, globally, only about 1C with a peak occurring about 5k years ago. We have taken a 1C cooling that took 5k years and erased it in ~50 years, with the potential to raise the global temperature 2, 3 or 4C (depending on emissions path) in the next 100 years.

Skepticism is a fundamental aspect of good science. Every good research paper ever written is functionally based in skepticism. BUT, the research coming from the very very few researchers that are challenging human-caused global warming is generally being funded by the fossil fuels industry, much the same way that the tobacco industry funded research to discredit the link between smoking and cancer.

The science of climate change goes back some 150 years. This is a well researched field of science and is as certain as evolution and relativity. The radiative properties of CO2 and the relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature is well established. And just like evolution and relativity, we continue to research it because there is always more to understand. The leading edge research in climate change is related to climate responses to GHG perturbations, not whether it’s a concern or not. It’s a VERY serious concern according to every National Academy of Science on the planet.

Mr. Honeycutt – You say “denier” science is funded by the fossil fuels industry, so it naturally should be discounted? So if you’re a business you can’t have a voice? The Cato Institute doesn’t buy the alleged scientific consensus on warming, but can you please find me even a dollar that it gets from ExxonMobil and the others?

After that, who funds the scientists who claim the sky is falling? Are they angels, and if so, who decides this?

When people invest they are buying FUTURE dollar income streams. That’s a tautology. My column says as evidenced by all the investment in coastal properties, mortgages for those, not to mention all the businesses on the coasts, the market view is that global warming alarmism is well overdone. You can say markets are stupid, but you can’t deny their verdict on what you deem a fact.

John… If the industry funded research were being done in good faith, it wouldn’t be a problem at all. The problem lay in the fact that the overwhelming scientific evidence shows us that we have to stop putting our carbon into the atmosphere. There really is no other conclusion you can come to based on a truly overwhelming amount of evidence, and that conclusion is highly inconvenient to the fossil fuels industry.

Think of it this way. The ROI for industry funding of the Cato Institute to produce research suggesting there “might not” be a problem is extremely high. When you have large industry players earning, as in the case of ExxonMobil, $8B a quarter, any delay at all in action to address climate change increases their bottom line. Just like with the tobacco industry, funding doubt in the public discussion has a very high ROI.

[And actually, XOM has pulled funding for such groups due to the poor public perception for their company. I use XOM for an example of the level of profits and ROI. Cato is funded by a wide range of private companies who don't have similar public exposure, including the Koch brothers.]

As for the source of scientists funding… Non-industry funded scientific research is based in learning things that we don’t yet understand. Grants are funded not for conclusions (as industry funded research is done) but for discovery. And research scientist would tell you, the best way to be turned down for a grant would be to state the conclusion you want to find. You get grants for saying, “Here’s something we don’t understand, please fund me so I can research this so we can understand what’s going on.”

When people invest they are buying the PERCEPTION of future income streams. They rarely ever hold those shares long enough to ever reap that future income. In fact, the incentive is to get rid of a position before that perception of future income erodes for one reason or another.

Same applies to coastal properties. The market incentive is to get in and out and make a profit, rather than to hold the asset and get stuck holding the bag when a crisis arrises. And I wouldn’t say that markets are stupid, but they do have a significant capacity to overlook sometimes things that are fundamentally obvious when they’re caught up in over an over-enthusiastic drive to win.

The CATO Institute (which I admire) is not a Scientific Institute. Assuming you were genuinely interested in the validity of the Science behind AGW, does that mean you would go to CATO for an analysis of the SCIENCE?

And your argument about people buying a future stream of income means that your ‘methodology’ is based on investor’s OPINIONS about phenomena that play out over decades. So you believe that the test of a complex Scientific hypothesis is to take an opinion poll of NON-SCIENTISTS?

How can you say with a straight face that your stock market argument about AGW should stand up in the court of Reason?

Your final sentence speaks to an earlier reply to KevinFish. As to settled science, if there is this much discussion in and out of the scientific community, I would infer it is NOT settled science but still a hypothesis.

There isn’t much discussion of this kind of stuff in the scientific community at all….what little there focuses on what kind of two by four it takes to hit mules like you with so we can get your attention. I’m a scientist, Rob is- you’re not and you put one airs speculationing about we are doing with lifting one little lazy finger to investigate. I smell unwarranted entitlement from unearned money.

There is a solution to global warming that won’t cost taxpayers and won’t require government regulations: There is a simple, realistic plan for replacing fossil fuels without hurting our economy. Eight Nobel Prize-wining economists and the Harvard economist who co-authored of the latest IPCC report advocate a consumer-friendly carbon tax to transition efficiently to clean energy without economic pain. A steadily increasing carbon pollution tax rebated directly to consumers, a “tax swap,” will let the market make the switch to renewables as carbon fuels get increasingly more expensive than solar and wind energy. As they scale up, solar and wind get cheaper and storage/intermittency problems have been solved. Solar and wind are already becoming competitive with dirty energy even though their subsidies have been eliminated while massive, and completely unnecessary multi-billion dollar annual subsidies for fossil fuels continue.

Because this is a market-driven process and revenue-neutral, with no government regulations, prominent Republicans like George Schultz, and Kevin Hassett, Art Laffer, Greg Mankiw, and Douglas Holtz-Eakins support it. All we lack is the political will to make this happen. The Citizens Climate Lobby website has the details of the revenue-neutral carbon tax plan.

The reason the stock market, the banking and business world aren’t reacting to climate change is that they are as clueless on the subject as you are. First of all, climate change has barely begun, but we have more than thirty years of it coming, increasingly worse, guaranteed, because global warming involves a time delay. It takes about three decades for the excess CO2 we put in the atmosphere today to heat up. It doesn’t dissipate either, it just adds on to what’s up there already. And the amount we’ve put up there per year in the past three decades is about double what it was before.

Those costal cities you mentioned will be going underwater, alright, but like Miami Beach which is already starting to flood, the ostrich-head-in-the-sand attitude, like yours will prevail and they will wait till a storm causes massive flooding. By then it will be too late to do anything. (Actually, it already is. Greenland’s ice will melt completely, that’s now irreversible, which means good-bye Miami.)

Scientifically illiterate writers like you who ignore the scientific warnings play a big part in confusing people about climate change and lulling them in a false sense of security and they do the public a great disservice. Read the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s new online report, “What We Know” for a good, quick summary of the dangers of climate change that are agreed upon by over 97% of the world’s climate scientists and every major scientific body worldwide. The latest IPCC reports say we have only 15 years to avoid “catastrophic” climate change. And scientists do not use the term “catastrophic” lightly.

That 97% is an interesting figure. Did you know it is derived from Maggie Zimmerman’s master’s thesis? She got her results by asking 10,257 Earth scientists questions, but she and her thesis advisor only chose a subgroup of 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought people contributed to climate change. Guess what 75/77 is? That is where you get your 97%! Where did that info come from? Well, Lawrence Solomon wrote about the highly touted “97%” in a January 2011 article. It is fascinating reading.

Did you know that the 97% figure actually comes from more than one research paper? The scientific consensus on global warming has been tested numerous ways and they all come up with the same conclusion.

Thanks for the information. Does the 97% number still come from less than 100 scientists? Odd that the percentage is exactly the same unless the same people were just recounted which seems to support a weaker consensus number.

If you understood statistical sampling you get that it doesn’t really take that large of a sample to determine, with fairly high confidence, that a number is correct. The Oreskes paper I cited sampled nearly 1000 research papers. Doran sampled I think it was 1300 scientists. Anderegg sampled in the thousands. And the Cook paper sampled ~10,000 research papers. All show nearly the same figure, because that figure is highly likely to be the correct figure.

The writer expected comments saying that this is rubbish, so here is the first.

1. The “markets” reflect the beliefs of investors, not the truth. If investors read articles such as this, in a respected magazine, it will influence the market.

2. As the author says, Global Warming is a long-term problem, not a short term one. Why would I not buy a coastal house now, just because it will be under water when I’m dead? The problem is that *fixing* global warming is also a very long-term proposition. In order to have benefits in 100 years, we need to *start* now.

3. The author says “Wall Street is nothing if not expert at creating all manner of ways for individuals to bet on the direction of markets”. I say “Wall Street is nothing if not short-sighted”. On Wall Street, 10 years is considered long term! By the time climate change has its big impacts, the economy will be substantially different. Peak oil will have started to bite, and global growth will be negative. Why would I invest in 80~100 year financial instruments that are backed by an entity that will probably have ceased to exist by that time?

4. The author says that science has often previously predicted the end of the world. When? There has never been as strong a scientific consensus that the biosphere is facing a calamity as there is now. Certainly many religions have predicted that, but science is not a religion. Science is about *testing* hypotheses, and this hypothesis has stood up to a huge amount of testing.

The market has come to believe in perpetual growth as if it is the natural state of the world. It is no wonder that the market doesn’t price in the full effects of global warming. The “theory” of global warming certainly has much more evidence than the *theory* that the market has wisdom. Admittedly, it seems that the market does get some things right, as well as getting many wrong, but putting greater faith in the market than on hard evidence is surely unwise.

The author states that the government shouldn’t support green energy. This is an issue of national security that vastly exceeds military threats. If the government should not subsidize protection of our biosphere, then it should also surely not subsidize protection of our boarders, or those of our allies overseas. Surely if the country is worth protecting, then “the market” would have put a suitable price on it… or does that logic suddenly not apply?

There is an study out indicating that warming is reducing incidence of US tornadoes. There is still no scientific evidence of human attribution for increased hurricanes, floods, droughts or tornadoes/storms. As far as sea level rise the latest IPCC report has LOWERED thermal expansion as a contributor to rising sea level from 1.6mm/year in 2007 to 1.1mm/year in 2013 so ocean heat uptake must have been calculated wrong in 2007 and the IPCC scientists now admit much more of the SLR is due to human used water run off into oceans. Sea level rise data prior to 2003 is unreliable because of too little data. NOAA has tide gauge data that shows little to no SLR increases on USA coasts but what we are seeing is land subsidence which has nothing to do with warming. So yes SLR continues to rise at the same rate it did for the last 150 years but much less than it did 6,000 years ago.

All one has to do is account for storm surge data from past data and tack on a few extra feet for natural SLR and you’re good to go. Longer term we might need sea walls like the Dutch began in the 11th century when sea level overtook their land (what were CO2 levels then?). The fact is that in the long term reducing CO2 won’t curb SLR.

In summary yes there is a real threat from SLR which in the shorter term, next 100 years, comes mostly from storm surge. Longer term 300-1,000 years sea walls will be required unless geo-engineering is implemented to reduce top of the atmosphere equilibrium and create cooling to lower the ocean heat content and cause oceans levels to retreat like in the ice age.

The rate of sea level rise in the 1993 to 2014 period is 4 times greater than what was observed a century ago. The rate of sea level rise is accelerating. Columbia University http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaLevel/

The only things that can cause sea level to rise are thermal expansion and melting of land based ice, and both of these are caused by Global Warming.

Despite manipulations of the stock market and a history of crashes that’s really not a good gauge to use for measurement. Could it be that the market is betting whose money is bigger? Fossil Fuels or Science?

People are dumb. The build (and rebuild) in flood prone areas, in the shadow of volcanoes and and put nuclear plants within spitting distance of known fault lines. So please I need some money for my retirement where can I bet on all of this in the market?

The anti-science, paid propagandist crowd knows full well that there is no AGW signal in sea level rise. If there were, you would see an acceleration in sea level rise rate with increasing CO2 emissions and forcing. But the signal you see is deceleration, indicating cooling. The facts are diverging from the theory at an alarming rate, it is in total collapse. Once again, the market is correct.

Presumably through an oversight, Mr. Smith’s link takes us to an old version (through 2011) of the data which ends on a downward trend. Go to the source (http://sealevel.colorado.edu/) and you will see later data that reveals reversion to the long term upward trend. The dip in 2010 and 2011 is accounted for by water shifted from the oceans to land in the form of flooding in Australia, which of course eventually goes back to the sea: http://bit.ly/1fn2VNS. It is not surprising that the sea level rise does not strictly follow the co2 concentration since short-term “noise” is always imposed on the overall trend just as it is with the surface temp record.

As noted above in my previous comment (and link to the Columbia University web page), sea level not only continues to rise, the rate of rise is accelerating. Global Warming Deniers “cherry pick” data to try to present a false conclusion. For example the reference to the Global Warming Denier blog at http://naturalclimate.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/sea-level-deconstruction/ uses an old version of the University of Colorado sea level chart that stops during the 2011/2012 La Nina. La Ninas cause heavy rains in Australia and a lot of this heavy rain pooled in Australia’s Lake Eyre. (A closed inland desert basin below sea level.) This temporarily removed the water from the earth’s oceans. In subsequent years most of this pooled water has evaporated and normal precipitation has returned the water to the oceans.

The current University of Colorado sea level graph at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ shows that the rate of sea level rise is right back on the upward trend line – which is 4 times faster than what prevailed a century ago.

sea levels are rising, and at an increasing rate; that is not in question: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html

i don’t pretend to have any great knowledge or experience regarding real estate but, if i did, i think that i would probably buy now to ride the wave as high as i could before dumping at the first indication of a turn in the market. it’s really no different than the gold rush, is it? everyone dove in until they didn’t.

Great article from the point of raising the question – WHY ARE THE MARKETS NOT RESPONDING TO CLIMATE CHANGE? – But I think it is short on the investigative side. You should ask some of the traders and banks that ARE investing on these bases. For example Triodos bank in Europe. Also insurance companies and pensions firms – what do they say? Also I would have asked some of the institutional scientists – you can find their names in the IPCC and almost every science application now has to consider climate change to some degree in the related sciences. Ask them? Ask some economists? And yes ask some of the CEOs of fortune 500 why is it business as usual if the threat is real.

Dr. Molina who won a Nobel science prize on the “ozone hole” often talks about the similarities between the “debate” on ozone depletion and AGW. He wonders if in today’s horribly polarized political world if the Montreal Protocol would ever have been implemented. After all, Dr. Molina (at the time) only had findings based on “lab results” of chlorine and ozone; he couldn’t model ozone depletion well. Apocalyptic warnings? How come folks like you never talk about how well Industry’s Apocalyptic economic warnings turned out to be true with environmental issues like CFCs or with Acid Rain?

Look markets do not teach you anything about geophysical phenomena. They teach you how to make profits based on the behaviours of finance houses and moneyed interests. Scientists teach us what the science is and politicians and government strategists assess the risks based on that scientific knowledge and plan how to apply the science and how to best leverage the country’s institutions to achieve aims to head off these risks.

No one in their right mind would turn to Wall Street for an answer to any of these questions. Just like no one turned to Wall Street to fight World War Two.

I recall your previous CC piece having a little science. Didn’t you say that if an ice cube melts in a glass of water, the water level doesn’t change? I’m not sold on all aspects of CC, but you should definitely avoid using that kind of rebuttal. It only serves to give the Bill Mahers of the world cannon fodder.

Hi John, I’m a very concerned activist on climate change, but I totally get your point. There is a disconnect, and an investable one. I think your analysis of the financial crash is unusual, and I don’t know enough to buy it or not. So I’ll continue to ask for government and corporate action on climate change – and look for the markets to come up to speed on what I feel certain is going to happen. (While still hoping I’m somehow wrong about it.) PS Are those your daughters? They look very happy, congratulations. (The best way to get the population curve to trend down is to educate and empower women; they look pretty educated and empowered to me. So, no resentment of anyone’s existence here.)

The tidal gauge at the end of Manhattan has been in operation since the 1850s, and that nearly 160 year record shows the effective sea level rise (including subsidence) has been constant. Sea levels were rising before our carbon dioxide emissions could have been responsible, and they have not changed their rate of rise in the recent half-century. http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8518750

Not only do real estate prices signal no alarm, the actual scientific data says the same thing.

I have personally observed this sea level rise here on the east coast. Scientists say they worry about a 2 to 4 inch rise but I went to the beach last weekend, built a sand castle along with a village and roads and all sorts of neat stuff, and what I saw wasn’t a little 2 to 4 inch rise. Hell it must have been a 2 to 4 FOOT rise (and that was all while I was there – who knows how high it got after I left). Anyway it wiped out the village, the castle, and everything around it. It was horrible. And just so you don’t think this is merely one data point, I was out in San Diego a few years ago and witnessed the same thing.

Gretchen… What’s expected by the end of the century is about a meter of sea level rise. But even much less sea level rise becomes important during storm surges.

Think of it this way. Sandy was a hurricane that stretched almost the full length of the eastern seaboard. Consider that the entire area of the storm is pulling up on the surface of the ocean. An inch of sea level becomes amplified due to the sheer volume of water that’s being acted upon. Suddenly a storm surge of 10 feet becomes a storm surge of 13 feet.

Now, extrapolate this out for the end of the century when we have a meter of sea level rise. Extrapolate out larger and more powerful hurricanes. Extrapolate out increased frequency of storms. These are all multiplier effects.

The explanation you’re presenting is the same as saying that 4C of global temperature rise is nothing because the temperature yesterday fluctuated 10C from morning to afternoon.

Actually, the alarmists don’t believe their own dire predictions. If they did, they would demand a crash program of research and construction of nuclear fission electric generation, rather than insisting on the dead-end and futile intermittent renewables and earth destroying biofuels. Wind and solar don’t even save significant CO2, unless backed by nuclear or hydro.

Global warming or climate change, call it what you will. It is real and it is affecting the world in which we live. We, like most criters on this planet, are built with a predisposition for domination and self preservation. However, the drive to survive is typically manifested in short term focus, i.e. within our lifetimes. Unfortunately, the history of this planet is littered with examples of strong and powerful species that vanished overnight for their inability to see or change the future.

We are not the center of the Universe and the S&P, DJ etc. are not its scoreboard. But unlike dinosaurs we can anticipate probable outcomes. So, as a species we have choices–fiddle while Rome burns or hedge our bets now. It takes vision, collective will, and courage to make changes on such a grand scale. I don’t think we need to wait for the score board to take action. It would be a lagging indicator–and by then there would be few left to cheer or rail against it.

Talk about flooded cities is nonsense unless one believes that the IPCC is badly underestimating sea level rise. The top of the likely range of their projection for their most pessimistic scenario is less than one meter. There is a convenient web page at:

Speaking oif scoreboards how about the temperature scoreboard. I doubt that the lovely girls in the photo have experienced ANY global warming in their lifetimes. http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/milestone-reached-no-global-warming-for-more-than-half-of-the-satellite-record/

John most of your critics here would not pass a freshman logic class. The point you are making is something that either someone gets right away, or seemingly no amount of repetition can help them understand it. But, for those logically challenged, let me try:

The author is simply making an empirical statement of fact. It’s true. It’s not really debatable that prices in the markets discussed are not pricing in the likelihood of any severe consequences of the effects of global warming of climate. Whether or not you agree with today’s assertions regarding climate change itself, has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the above statement of fact.

Next, we are not talking about novice investors. We’re talking some of the best investors and businessmen in our country buying up real estate without much regard to the alleged risks. This is also a statement of fact. I’ll add another: Warren Buffet & his insurance man Ajit Jain have not and are no pricing climate change into any of their property/casualty insurance pricing. These, ladies are gentlemen, are the best in that business, and that’s also a statement of fact. They are very aware of all climate change warnings. Google Buffet on the topic and he notes that the data simply does not support climate changing with respect to their business (insuring against catastrophe). Fact.

John what is happening is classic cognitive dissonance. People here something enough times and they stop questioning and stop thinking. Which, is a very unscientific way of thinking. Quality science is about continuously questioning, and subjecting a theory or set of data to testing, logic, and interpretation.

I think you are correct that John has made the case that there is no (or very little) market influence built into prices. I would agree that the markets are pretty much ignoring the risk of climate change. But, what I find wrong with his article is the implication that markets are somehow correct in this. That, if there were a real problem, markets would be accounting for it already.

I’ll note that when I google Buffett on climate change pretty much everything that comes up is directly sourced to a single Heartland Institute article. What the HI leaves out of their article is this:

“While the question of climate change ‘deserves lots of attention,’ Buffett said in a ‘Squawk Box’ interview, ‘It has no effect … [on] the prices we’re charging this year versus five years ago. And I don’t think it’ll have an effect on what we’re charging three years or five years from now.’ He added, ‘That may change ten years from now.’”

The challenge here is to NOT stop digging once you find something that you want to agree with. You have to be truly skeptical to challenge your own pre-conceived notions to more fully understand any given issue.

Rob, markets normally don’t care much about costs that are decades in the future. That’s because the discounted present value (sort of the inverse of compound interest) reduces the cost to vanishingly close to zero. For example, a climate cost of $100 100 years hence would be worth less than a penny today assuming an interest rate of 6.5%. To address AGW, and save today’s children and their children from a miserable existance, we need to believe in causes and purposes outside the purview of markets. The disjunction in the time horizon that matters to financial markets vs the time horizon that’s significant for AGW is a societal systems issue, hardly ever explicitly discussed.

I agree that government involvement should be limited. Take away the government sponsored flood insurance and hurricane disaster relief for coastal development and privatize both. Then how would your concept pan out?

The challenge here is that markets, consumer and capital all work with short term vision. Climate change is a long term problem, and long term problems can only be functionally addressed by governments.

Think: The National highway system, space exploration, early phase technology…

If it had been left to markets to develop these, they never would have happened. Likewise, if we look solely to market forces to address (or indicate) climate change, nothing will ever happen.

For starters, the comment that markets don’t deal with long-term issues makes it sound as if markets are some living, breathing entity that act separate and apart from people themselves. Markets are just indicators of everyone’s collective actions, preferences, beliefs, etc. So if, as you claim, markets don’t deal with long-term problems, let’s put that into more literal terms: People don’t deal with long-term problems. Only your select group of really smart people (elected officials) do.

Chad… The article I’m responding to is addressing the relationship between market responses and climate change. If markets are just human responses, then your point is moot.

Public companies are typically driven by quarterly results without full consideration of long term potential for earnings. Case in point would be the recently much discussed implications of the fossil fuels industry continuing to invest heavily in new exploration and new infrastructure for resources that, within the next decade, will very likely to be proven to be unrecoverable due to climate implications. Those reserves become wasted development and stranded assets to the tune of, potentially, as much as $10 trillion.

Market forces drive fossil fuel companies to boost their share prices by selling the idea that they can continue to extract those assets without end. That sets up a market bubble that will definitely pop when climate impacts become more clear. The only rational way to soften the landing is to price carbon into the market place via carbon taxes so that it (slowly) becomes less economically viable to invest in extraction of those reserves. And that has to be a government level action base on the longterm stability and well-being of nations.

If you’ll watch, there is a strong subsurface Kelvin wave developing in the Pacific right now, which is an indicator of an El Nino coming in the next few months. So far it’s looking like it’s going to be a very strong El Nino that will start hitting surface waters later this summer or early fall. That will translate into rising surface temperature readings for 2015.

There’s some possibility that the climate responses resulting from this are going to be fairly dramatic and obvious enough that there will a considerable change in public perception of the climate change issue. That’s the point when people start asking the question, “How does this affect my stock portfolio?” And especially for fund managers, they’re going to start looking at the fossil fuel holdings in their portfolios and start considering the risk involved in holding those positions too long.

Mr. Honeycutt, here’s the problem. It’s hard to talk with people who, like central planners, naively think they can see into the future. Those of us who follow markets think it’s very difficult to know more than the collective knowledge of the marketplace itself. That’s why we mock those who claim to know what the weather will be like two weeks from now, let alone 100. Precisely because the climate is always changing, no one can know. All we can do is read market signals which are brimming with information, and which say all the worry over global warming is overdone. Please re-read your latest comment. You write as though you know something, as though you can predict this summer’s weather patterns in detail. This is the thinking of central planners. John

“If you’ll watch, there is a strong subsurface Kelvin wave developing in the Pacific right now, which is an indicator of an El Nino coming in the next few months. So far it’s looking like it’s going to be a very strong El Nino that will start hitting surface waters later this summer or early fall. That will translate into rising surface temperature readings for 2015.

There’s some possibility that the climate responses resulting from this are going to be fairly dramatic and obvious enough that there will a considerable change in public perception of the climate change issue. That’s the point when people start asking the question, “How does this affect my stock portfolio?” And especially for fund managers, they’re going to start looking at the fossil fuel holdings in their portfolios and start considering the risk involved in holding those positions too long. ”

Those of us who follow markets would never be so arrogant as to write this way.

John… If you’ll allow me to simplify the issue. (Not trying to be dismissive, just illustrative.)

If I put a pot of water on the stove and turn on the heat, I can make a rational assumption based on basic physics, that within a few minutes the water will start to boil.

A scientist can even go into more detail and measure the heat, the thermal flux between the heat source and the water, the thermal capacity of the water, etc. From that, we can understand with a reasonably strong certainty how long it will take the water to reach the boiling point.

Markets are different. Markets are a function of human responses that can change rather dramatically over time. Physics, on the other hand, do NOT change over time.

The fundamental physics regarding the radiative properties of greenhouse gases are very well understood. Our human/market responses to the challenge the physics presents us are less understood.

I can tell you with a very high level of certainty that surface temperatures are going to continue to rise in response to emissions of man-made greenhouse gases. I can tell you, also with a high level of certainty, that there will be changes in the climate system in response to the increased energy in the atmosphere. That’s just physics. I can not tell you with high certainty what people will do in response.

I’m confident that the impacts of climate change will become more evident. I’m less confident that markets are going to incorporate those increased risks into their stock holdings. And that opens the risk of a market bubble with valuations that cannot be supported over the long term.

I hope that stockholders become more aware of the potential risk. I also hope that governments will act to price carbon into the market place through carbon taxes. The lack of either of these occurring will produce a later correction that could be potentially very severe, and I know this as sure as I know that a heated pot of water will boil.

John… I need to add a short response to this comment: “This is the thinking of central planners.”

This is exactly the sort of knee-jerk reaction that so terribly pollutes the debate on almost every issue today. It’s a thinly veiled reference to failed communist policies, ones that no one today ascribes to. Many of us have different political and economic views than you, but that doesn’t give you the right to ascribe decades old failed systems to what we believe.

I am a businessman, John. I believe in the power of the market to solve big problems. But I also believe that markets must be regulated – just as we need road signs on highways – in order to maintain a healthy economy.

We’ve been a very healthy mixed economy since the 1930′s. It’s worked out quite well for the US that way. China is actually following our footsteps. In the past 30 years they’ve created a vibrant economy that has grown rapidly with little regulation (note: my second language is Cantonese and I do a lot of work in China) but the result of that lack of regulation has been the devastating pollution problems you see there today. The central government there is in a big push to install the sorts of regulations that we’ve put into place over the past 80 years. They’re trying to install their own version of an EPA.

You may have different opinions, and that’s fine. Since day one that’s what our system has been all about. I just ask that you don’t belittle those you disagree with by using outdated analogies that diminish our capacity to find common ground.

This continues to go nowhere. I’m going to write a piece (and I’ll post it here) about what markets are, what they do, and how they incorporate all of the world’s available knowledge into prices. I think, Rob, that you’ll benefit from seeing this, just as I’d probably benefit from reading some basic science (which I have the courage to admit I’m mostly ignorant on).

First, I would highly suggest you watch this AGU lecture by Dr Richard Alley. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RffPSrRpq_g

Dr Alley notes several very worthwhile papers to read. Another very good paper is Miller et al 2010 “A Precipitation and Temperature History of Greenland.” http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/MillerArctic.pdf

You quaint and risible notions of the market being any kind of scorecard for scientific matters, much less anything else were unfortunately subject to your incompetent presumptive referral to the same.

If markets had any utility as scoreboards for important scientific/policy matters I would have expected you to regale us with tales about cigarette smoking, polio vaccines, moon landings, beta blockers, monoclonal antibodies, I mean it’s hard to know where to stop. Instead you pick a couple of market failures and explain why it’s really not “the markets fault”.

Now when I see this kind of behavior from a salesman, I know the one in front of me is an even bigger liar than that profession’s immensely low standards for truth and honesty.

When I see this kind of rationalization from a supposedly spiritual figure, I see a congregation getting fleeced…

when I see it rising from the primeval ooze if market religion zealots, I’m reminded that your job is to keep the money moving fast enough so that the marks, suckers and rubes don’t notice you picking their pockets along the way.

Scoreboard? Nope, just more 3 card monte.

Science is about predicting the future. Every hypothesis made is a prediction about what will be found in future, even if it’s about data from the far past. That’s my business. I’m right good at it, and have a lot of money on the bottom line to show for it. This is another way of me saying: I’m a pro, you’re an unqualified amateur who needs to keep his feet off my lawn.

Beyond your self-enriching cant about the market as scoreboard, there’s the little matter of you making up your own private lies about the claims by the IPCC are. The world will be under water? No that’s your frat boy/animal house disdain for the details needed to work as an adult in this world. That one line alone tells anyone in the scientific community you’re not a commentator to be taken seriously.

But you also whinged in your article about name calling etc. From the point of view of a scientist you are a person with no regard for truth and a clear pattern of it in your writing. Are you meaning to imply that we can draw no conclusions about your moral fitness from your behavior? That you are immune from professional scolds like myself? Is your excuse that you go to church on Sunday?

Some of us view your behavior as reprehensible to the degree that you should be shunned from civilized society, as a clear and present danger.

No doubt the markets are a good source of collective wisdom about the future and the market price of a security encompasses all factors that would impact that price. Per the conventional theory of financial markets, market prices are set when investors (people and institutions) collectively attempt (consciously or not) to maximize the risk adjusted discounted present value of their investments.

As a writer for Forbes, you know the above. But I want you to know that some of us alarmists know that too inasmuch as you are suggesting that we don’t. On the other hand, I’m not sure that you understand the theory of global warming. If challenged, and even if you don’t believe in it, could you provide a coherent explanation at the high school physics level even without the math? Do you know the difference between climate and weather? Could you explain why decadal noise can overwhelm an upward trend? Do you understand why more co2 makes things worse; i.e., it is not already saturated? Could you explain the difference between, temperature, heat, and thermal energy? Do you know that all science is unproven and just a theory, including the theory of gravity?

The basic problem is that financial markets and climate operate on different time scales. Due to discounting, costs many decades out hardly matter for investors. But AGW problems don’t get serious and obvious for many decades. At the same time, the costs of remediation go up disproportionately with time; like saving for retirement starting when you are twenty vs fifty.

Kevin, While scientifically we’re on the same side, you have given unwarranted ground. I’ve scanned the 75+ comments above and none of the gormless acolytes in temple of capital provided even one example of the market serving as a scorecard for anything, much less science/policy matters. Again, Mr. Tamny, who I’d hope to see exiled lest his nonsense further damage civil discourse and society, provided no such, and instead focused defensively on some noted examples of failure and explained why his gods hadn’t failed him.

Then we had the usual pack of lies in the comments where some rumor dimly heard and faintly remembered is supposed to impress a successful working scientist such as myself. One of my other purposes is to remind this coven of conspiratorialists that their unearned sense of entitlement to pass judgment on the work of thousands of generations of scientists for generation is simple another glaring example of their moral failure.

You want to have a conversation where your pulling ilk gets treated with a modicum of respect, demonstrate a comprehensive investigation of segment of the literature and cite that. Citing climate change denial blogs simply is an advertisement that you have no skills to make an independent determination for yourself at even the lowest of scientific standards. Cherrypickinng one paper that you actually haven’t read cuts no ice with me because I check the work being shown to me.

I have waded into a cesspool here, and I am no Hercules – but maybe a few of us can divert the river of scientific truth into this squalor that we can least give a few miscreants a bad dream or two.

All you need to know about global warming and the DemonCrap party is that Al Sharpton is one of them as is the Prez who hides his college records (foreign student perhaps?). As a wise radio talker penned: Liberalism is a severe (my add-on) mental disorder…

See Mr. Tamny- this the garbage you collect. Old Jabaffy can’t evaluate the science, but prefers to rant about partisan politics. He can join you in exile as a clear and present danger to civil discourse.

Jabaffy btw is yet another conspiratorialist, proving Lewandowsky’s point yet again. You breed this kind of carcass fly, best keep it far away from the rest of us.

Tamny’s thesis in this article is that the way to test the validity of a Scientific hypothesis is to take a poll (!), or to look at markets, another form of polling, rather than to consider the evidence. I find his proposition ludicrous.

There is a school of thought in economics circles that the collective knowledge of the market place will account for all influences and “perfectly” price goods and services.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_market

The problem is, as often as this is proven to be incorrect, the people who hold to this belief just don’t want to let it go.

This is what I think Tamny is basing his article on. That, if there were a problem with climate change, the collective “wisdom of the market” would already be pricing it into the market place.

The problem here is, the misinformation coming from the fossil fuels industry is having a strong influence on those markets, rather than the real information based in the large body of peer reviewed research on climate.

The perfect markets idea only works in an ideal world where perfect information is available. And that’s just never the case.

The other big factor is the mere fact that humans are prone to react on emotion rather than information. They often act against their own best interested even when they have perfectly good information.

The whole perfect markets idea is one that is dying a very slow and begrudging death. (Watch what happens when I say this:)

Rob- without any examples of any market ever doing what Mr. Tamney claims markets do, this is simply more catering to faith fueled by the ability of one group of people to pick another group of people’s pockets.

Regardless of whether the market pricing model is valid, Tamnys these of relying upon opinion poles to invalidate a Scientific Theory is bogus. He has no concept of how the Scientific process works. (You need empirical data taken from nature that contadicts the theory).

Your talking point was answered the first time you posted it. Markets are irrational, that’s why we have bubbles and crashes. But you won’t answer, because you are the one who doesn’t desire a real argument.

The insurance companies certainly believe that global warming is real and is a serious threat. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/business/insurers-stray-from-the-conservative-line-on-climate-change.html?pagewanted=all

Global warming isn’t a scientific issue despite the pretenses, it’s a religious one. The belief that the sea levels will rise and destroy civilization due to mankind’s collective sin against the Divine and that we must pay repentance, build an ark, save the animals and drive a Prius, is a primal religious motif latent in the human psyche. Be damned the heretics and deniers for the Truth has been prophesied! The narrative is religious allegory and exists in nearly every one of the world’s religious tradition from the smallest tribes to the largest of the world’s religions. Science has merely been hijacked as the scriptural authority for what has become a Mother Earth worshiping environmental religion. Unfortunately this new religion places humanity squarely in the pits of hell.

Mark, your logic is flawed. Religions have “cried wolf” about the end of civilization, but you will recall that in the end of Aesop’s fable, a real wolf did appear. The fact that others have made incorrect predictions does not (logically) mean that the science is wrong.

Religions have said “Bad things will happen. I know because God told me.” Science says “We can *explain the mechanisms* by which humans are causing problems.” If you listen to them, scientists can explain in great detail, using facts that can be independently verified, what is going wrong. They are also willing to tell us what issues are still uncertain (such as the exact role that clouds play, or the exact changes in climate that will occur in different locations).

Unlike religions, the scientists are also not asking us to have “faith”. They are happy to explain to anyone who has the time and intelligence to listen. Science is not being used as “scriptural authority”. Science is a constantly evolving body of knowledge, based on evidence, whereas scriptures are generally static, or derived from unrepeatable “divine revelation”. An example of that dogmatic belief in this context is the original author’s belief that “Markets tell the truth”. Markets reflect the beliefs of humans who do not study the climate. It is not surprising that the markets do not reflect knowledge about climate science; they do not even reflect the knowledge that bull markets are bad times to invest.